In case anyone was wondering, 'New Horizons spacecraft now halfway to Pluto.'

[Baclava]

"In 2006, NASA dispatched an ambassador to the planetary frontier. The New Horizons spacecraft is now halfway between Earth and Pluto, on approach for a dramatic flight past the icy planet and its moons in July 2015.

After 10 years and more than 3 billion miles, on a historic voyage that has already taken it over the storms and around the moons of Jupiter, New Horizons will shed light on new kinds of worlds we've only just discovered on the outskirts of the solar system."

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html




Yeah - we need new propulsion systems, I know.

Fun facts: "The highest speed at which any spacecraft has ever escaped from the Earth is 35,800 mph (57,600 km/h) in the case of the New Horizons probe, which was launched in January 2006 and is now heading toward Pluto."

[anarch]

1. we need new energy sources of all kinds

not just for propulsion. I feel that we may have made more progress in the last 50 years if we had focused less on blowing each other up, and more on finding ways to live in a sustainable way. I have this crazy idea that we're missing something fundamental in our understanding of the universe, and if we just figured it out....

[Baclava]

4. I feel we are no longer a true space-faring race and might as well blow it all up

...and let the cephalopods have their chance...



They are ready for the next leap

Do octopuses have brains?

By invertebrate standards it’s a huge brain, but by vertebrate standards, it’s a small brain. What's interesting about the octopus is about one third of the neurons (nerve cells) are in the brain. They have a huge neural representation in the arms, and there's a ganglion controlling every sucker, so there's quite a bit of local control. As humans, we're very proud of having a pincer grasp—the thumb and forefinger—and we say that's responsible for our ability to manipulate the environment so well. The octopus can fold the two sides of its sucker together to form a pincer grasp and it can do that with every single one. It has a hundred pincer grasps.

Why do you think octopuses evolved such big brains?
Probably because the tropical coral reef is the most complex environment in the world. There's such a huge variety of situations, lots of kinds of prey, lots of predators, and if you are not armored, you'd better be smart. The octopus has gone the smart route. Also, we talk about mammalian intelligence evolving in social situations, but clearly the octopus, a solitary organism, has evolved intelligence to solve ecological problems.


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-octopuses-smart

[originalpckelly]

2. 2006 wasn't a decade ago.

Just sayin'.

[Fumesucker]

3. It's going to take a decade to get to Pluto..

It wasn't the clearest sentence I've ever read..

[Baclava]

5. I think they were talking about arriving at Pluto 2015 ish?- but their math must be worse than mine

I don't do math

[eppur_se_muova]

6. This dragster crossed the Moon's orbit 9 hrs after launch.

Sorry if that's the best an "old-fashioned" propulsion system can do.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

7. PLANET??? NASA is calling Pluto a PLANET?

I thought this was decided. NOT A PLANET. (I personally liked Pluto as a planet, but now that it has been downgraded it needs to be kept in its place)

sP